I wrote the Inside Wall Street column at Business Week Magazine for 28 years, through December 30, 2009. It was one of the most influential market columns as it moved stocks that I highlighted each week. BW had a yearly ScoreCard Report that tracked the performance of the stocks I mentioned, and the results confirmed their positive impact..I also wrote two books: “<a href="http://www.amazon.com/Secrets-Street-Dark-Making-Money/dp/0070402566"Secrets of the Street, the Dark Side of Making Money,” published by McGraw-Hill in 1995, and “Gene Marcial’s Seven Commandments of Stock Investing,” published by FT Press in 2008. I resumed writing the “Inside Wall Street” column for AOL DailyFinance after Bloomberg acquired BW in December 2009. Subsequently, I moved the column to MSN.com after AOL merged with the Huffington Post. I then started writing for Forbes.com with a new column, “Street Beat,” in mid-April 2011, where I expect my readers will follow me.

Dr. Lindsay Rosenwald is a familiar name on Wall Street, a long-time investor with 23 years of experience as a biotechnology entrepreneur, instrumental in founding and recapitalizing a large number of public and private life sciences companies, including Cougar Biotechnology which was acquired by Johnson & Johnson for $1 billion in 2009.

The latest company he has formed is again catching the eye of biotech investors: Coronado Biosciences (CNDO), which is developing two therapies that alter the activity of the immune system. Its probiotic treatment consists of “Trichuris suis ova (TSO),” or non-infectious porcine whipworm eggs, to quell inflammation and abnormal immune function that causes such autoimmune diseases as multiple sclerosis (MS), inflammatory bowel disease, and type 1 diabetes.

“The lead indication is Crohn’s Disease, though MS is not far behind,” says Dr. Keith A. Markey, life sciences analyst at investment firm Griffin Securities. Its second program, he notes, relies on a proprietary method to activate natural killer cells of the innate immune system to combat cancer. Those killer cells, which have shown promise against solid and hematological malignancies, are being developed to treat acute myeloid leukemia, says the analyst.

“Coronado has a proprietary method of activating the killer cells ‘ex vivo’ to create a personalized medicine for a variety of malignancies, says Dr. Markey. Coronado is collaborating with European companies on the probiotic project and will likely seek other foreign companies to market its natural killer-cells therapy, he adds.

Joseph Pantginis, biotech analyst at Roth Capital Partners, is also high on Coronado’s two therapies. “We see significant potential with Coronado’s two clinical programs, based on encouraging preliminary signs of efficacy and favorable safety,” he says. The analyst expects the launch of a Phase 2 study of TSO in patients with Crohn’s disease in the second quarter of this year, while interim data from a randomized Phase 2 study conducted by Coronado’s partner, Dr. Falk Pharma, is also expected to be announced sometime within that period.

Pantginis rates Coronado’s stock, currently trading on the NASDAQ at $7.44 a share, as a buy with a price target of $24, based in part on his belief that Coronado represents a significant value on TSO’s potential to address large market, if not blockbuster, opportunites.

Dr. Bobby W. Sandage Jr., president and CEO of Coronado, says that results from a series of proof-of-principle clinical studies have demonstrated that TSO is “safe and well tolerated with no side effects or complications.” He says the use of pig whipworm eggs represents a novel approach to treating autoimmune diseases. Sandage says the company has licensed numerous patents in the field to gain exclusive rights to commercialize the technology in North America, South America and Japan.

Griffin’s analyst Dr. Markey says epidemiological data suggest that parasitic worms have played an important yet unappreciated role in helping to hold the human immune system in check. As living standards have improved over the past 100 years and medicines developed to treat helminth infections, autoimmune diseases have become more common.

Preclinical studies have shown, says Dr. Markey, that helminths (parasitic worms) use various mechanisms to protect themselves from detection and attack by the human immune system. Coronado’s therapy, Dr. Market notes, which consists of eggs of the pig whipworm TSO, takes advantage of the natural protective mechanisms of helminths, which have evolved over eons, to treat intractable diseases. Just as important, he adds, the ova or eggs pose no threat to humans as they are not infectious and cannot be spread from one person to another.

These huge, under-served markets offer large potential returns on Coronado’s R&D investments. Dr. Markey says Coronado is “developing its helminth therapy to treat autoimmune diseases that have failed to respond well to medicines thus far.” Yet they affect the daily lives of an estimated 10% of the world’s population, he says.

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